Top UN official begins week-long visit to Sudan's Darfur
7/10/2008 16:04
The head of United Nations peacekeeping operations has began a week-long
visit to Sudan, where the world organization currently has two operations -- one
to support the 2005 north-south peace deal and the other to quell the violence
that has plagued the western region of Darfur since 2003.
The familiarization
tour for Alain Le Roy is his first since being appointed as UN
Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations in August.
"Le Roy is
scheduled to arrive in El Fasher, North Darfur tomorrow as the first leg of a
visit that will also take him to Nyala in South Darfur and El Geneina in West
Darfur," the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) said in a statement received in Nairobi
today.
After arriving in the capital, Khartoum, Le Roy has met with the
Secretary-General's Special Representative, Ashraf Qazi, and other senior
officials from UNMIS, which is tasked with supporting the implementation of the
Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA).
"During his tour to what will be, upon
full deployment, the largest peacekeeping operation in UN history, Mr. Leroy
will be visiting UNAMID battalions and team sites, several camps of Internally
Displaced Persons (IDPs), UN Agencies, Programs and Funds," it said.
Signed
by the Khartoum Government and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) in
2005, the agreement ended the country's long-running north-south civil
war.
The UN peacekeeping chief is also scheduled to visit Kadugli, Abyei,
Juba and El Obeid, and meet with leadership of the government of National Unity
and the government of southern Sudan and other key interlocutors.
Le Roy will
also travel to El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state and the headquarters
of the hybrid UN-African Union peacekeeping mission to Darfur, known as UNAMID,
which was deployed at the start of this year to help bring peace to the
strife-torn region.
UNAMID, which is slated to become the world body's
largest peacekeeping operation with some 26,000 personnel at full strength,
currently has some 10,000 troops and police officers on the ground and still
lacks essential equipment, including helicopters.
Another 3,000 personnel are
expected to join UNAMID in the coming weeks, bringing the total number of troops
by the end of November to about 13,000.
Also on Le Roy's schedule are stops
in South Darfur's capital, Nyala, and El Geneina, capital of West
Darfur.
Xinhua
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